


The King is Dead (Long Live the Queen)

by paperdream



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon, Women Being Awesome, you can interpret peggy's relationship status any which way you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7065586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperdream/pseuds/paperdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lives fall like dominoes, and others rebuild in their wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peggy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ComeBackToTheValley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComeBackToTheValley/gifts).



Sometimes in her dreams she feels the tingling of the kiss and the burn in her muscles. When she wakes up, Peggy thinks of Steve dying with smudges of her lipstick in the corners of his mouth and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  
*

  
Now that they’ve removed her to a desk the burn in her muscles she used to relish has moved as well. Her spirits lights up at every indignity, and sometimes it’s all she can do to keep from slamming Jack’s lunch into his face instead of his hand.

  
“Peg,” Steve echoes in her ears, the tone of voice he always used when the Commandos had done something particularly absurd and it was all he could do to keep from joining in instead of scolding them. “Show them better.

  
“Don’t play by their rules.”

 

*

  
She doesn’t. She fights tooth and nail and dishes out blows in a fashion that would make the runt getting beat up in alleys proud. When Jarvis gasps and grumbles at the lateness of the hour and the trouble she gets into she tries to picture him meeting Stove, but the image is fuzzy, not quite coalesced. The whole scene feels alien, Steve backed by Howard’s pristine foyer instead of a camp or battlefield.

  
*

  
It’s easy to pick up the old rapport with the Commandos. Well, the originals who remain, at least. The team from the SSR and the new Commandos don’t seem to notice, but the old hands orbit a set of punched-out holes.

  
Steve and Barnes, dead.

  
Morita, running for Senator back home in California and helping his family come home.

  
Dernier still looking for cousins and siblings vanished into the landscape pitted by trenches and bombs.

  
Gabe, Dum Dum, Falsworth, her, all peppered throughout the military and government, the fight still burning in their bones.

  
Leviathan stokes the blaze.

  
*

  
They purge the city of every trace of Leviathan they can find they cleanse Steve’s city, but ghosts still haunt the streets.  
The victory isn’t complete, but then, it never is

.  
*

  
She feels bad for pushing Angie aside, but she isn’t sure she’s ready for the reckoning. She pushes on anyway, bottle of wine and new tube of lipstick (Angie’s color) in hand.  
Angie’s door swings open to reveal her with arms crossed and lips pursed, and the carefully crafted apology Jarvis had helped her with vanishes.  
Instead, she blurts, “Thank you for embarrassing Thompson. And not pushing me out the window.”

  
Angie blinks slowly, and Peggy shifts nervously from foot to foot. She’s meant to be clearing out her things, and she doesn’t think Miriam would take kindly to her making visiting rounds.

  
“That wine any good?” Angie finally asks.

  
“I believe so.”

 

Angie sighs and steps aside, “You have some explaining to do, English.”

  
*

  
They manage to get thoroughly drunk in very short order. By the time the story’s told, Angie’s alternating between being inexplicably amused at Peggy being, “a real-life secret agent” and repeatedly asking whether or not, “Captain America’s as dreamy as he sounds on the radio?”

  
Angie falls back in the midst of another giggling fit, and Peggy gives in to a wild impulse.

  
“Will you move in with me?”

  
Angie sits straight up and gives her a measuring look. Peggy holds her breath.

  
*

  
The Griffith girls throw them a going away party at a greasy little bar Peggy doesn’t think she could find again if she tried. She tries to protest that they aren’t moving so far away as all that and throw them off the topic of her arrest with some nonsense about a mix-up with her immigration papers. Miriam’s thrown girls out for less, so she earns their sympathy.

  
Stella squeezes her arm as the night winds down and crows, “To moving up in the world!” The toast is enthusiastically returned as everyone gathers their things for the dash back before curfew.

  
She ends the night with lipstick smudged on her arms and cheeks and her hair a rat’s nest. When they arrive back she can hear Angie fulfilling her promise to use every phone in the apartment, chattering to her mother in the parlor.

  
*

  
The heat of LA burns the fire from her chest, not entirely, but enough. Kissing Jason is different from kissing Steve, cinnamon and peppermint and liquor instead of gunpowder and sweat. She likes it.

  
She likes it, but she isn’t good for him. He’ll be better off without her, now that his body is free of black sludge.

  
Jason keeps in touch though, little notes about his work, mostly. They make her smile.


	2. Angie

When Angie told her father she wanted to move out and get a job on Broadway, he had had three edicts; “Don’t sleep with someone to get a job, he’ll only leave you crying. If you gotta sleep with ‘em, do it because you want to.

  
“Don’t give anyone your Nonna’s weddin’ cake recipe unless they marry ya first. That’s a _family_ recipe, ya hear?

  
“And for Pete’s sake, sweetheart, don’t go marryin’ a cop.”

  
All told, if she were a sappy drunk, Angie probably would’ve cried and cried and cried when Peg told her why she’d been lying. Instead she laughs like the champagne they pass around the table at New Year’s, fizzy and close.

  
*

  
Moving in with isn’t the same as marrying, and a secret agent isn’t the same as a cop, Angie reasons, so her father couldn’t possibly blame her for standing by a friend. And technically, it’s Howard Stark they’re both moving in with, and boy oh boy if her Nonna ever got wind of that, well. Hell hath no fury like a grandmother whose granddaughter has been seen in the company of a gentleman of ill repute.

  
Still, she’s quietly grateful for the boxing lessons Uncle Joey gave her when the boys started noticing her. And if she ever has cause to make use of the gun skills he ingrained into her- not to mention the pearl-handled pistol (“a pretty gun for a pretty girl, Angela”) tucked at the back of her dresser drawer, she guesses he’ll just get a chance to say “I told you so”.

  
(She’d never tell him about it, though. The last thing his ego needs is a boost, and there was the illusory disdain at the birthday gift she’d decried as absurd to maintain.)

  
(Besides, he’d only worry.)

  
There are certain precautions a girl ought to take when she’s living with a real-life spy, after all.

  
*

  
Showing up in a chauffeured car- Mr. Jarvis insisted on driving her “until you have the lay of the land. Public transportation can be dangerous for a young lady alone,” never mind she’s been taking it most of her life- must really make an impression on casting agents, because she almost gets the next gig she tries out for, and makes it all the way through her audition song.

  
She still doesn’t get it, but she shakes it off- the world just isn’t ready for Angie Martinelli yet, that’s all.

  
Peggy’s at home with a plate of cookies- the only thing besides beans, bacon, and stew she can make without burning something- and consolation wine, so it’s alright in the end.

  
*

  
Angie liked to think waitressing had trained her mother’s temper out of her, but evidently it’s just channeled it into jealousy. She holds it in until after Peggy’s left, but the thought of her best friend in Hollywood- Hollywood!- might just make her bubble over.

  
She’s on her third circuit of the house telephones, but her mother is more fixated on why the telephone company can’t just get a girl who’s already in LA- “Lord knows there are more than enough trying to become Hedy Lamar with sunshine and a casting agent with loose morals who could use some honest work!”- and making not-so-subtle jabs at the others in Angie’s chosen profession. As far as Maria Martinelli is concerned, her daughter is a bastion of talent, looks, and moral fiber in an altogether dismal acting landscape.

  
Abrasive as it may be, the support soothes Angie’s ruffled feathers just a bit.

  
*

  
Well. If one of them was going to move to Hollywood- Hollywood! Permanently!- Angie doubts anyone would have picked Peggy for it. She’s ready to start in on the platitudes while mentally going through potential living arrangements when Peggy adds, “I’ve found- well, Howard helped a bit- a sweet little apartment with a beachside view, two bedrooms, and a rent just high enough to require a roommate. How do feel about making a stab at a film career?”

  
Angie’s heart nearly stops- her parents will be furious- and says, “You want me to pack my bags, English?”

  
*

  
Peggy the Paranoid wouldn’t tell her a blessed thing over the phone, but once Angie arrives in Hollywood- Hollywood!- the stops come out. She’s seen some nasty scars in her time, but the one in Peggy’s gut- from being impaled, of all things- is a real doozy.

  
She may not have met the guy, and Peggy brushes her off when she asks, but “Jason” sounds like a real doozy too, and she’d like to give him a look herself. If all else fails, she’ll start going through the phonebook.

  
*

  
Peggy may have been less secure about the whole “moving Angie to Hollywood” thing than previously though, because she’s somehow managed to overcompensate and get Angie an audition in no less than two days- “Howard has connections.” Sure he does, but, she thinks, Peggy has worries.

  
Or maybe Stark did it as a show of good will. She’s beginning to get that he’s like that.

  
The audition itself doesn’t go great, but it doesn’t go terribly either. Angie suspects she may have been replaced by one of the three girls waiting with hairdos nearly identical to her own, and decides maybe it’s time for a change.

 

*

 

Peggy isn’t supposed to tell her about ongoing cases, but it’s clear from her behavior that something big’s afoot.

  
Angie’s never been the waiting-up type, but she has an audition in the morning and Peggy isn’t back yet, so why shouldn’t she stay up and practice lines in her room?  
As a result, she definitely hears the footsteps that sound nothing like Peggy’s heels click or her light booted tread clomping through the door.

  
It takes her a moment to set down the script and go for her gun- she toes off her hard-soled slippers as a last thought and creeps down the hall in bare feet- but by the time she reaches the darkened kitchen the intruder’s only made it to the table.

  
Angie tries to pitch her voice down to sound more masculine and threatening as she raises the gun, “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”

  
The intruder drops heavily into one of the rickety wooden chairs and raises his hands, “I’m a friend of Peggy’s.”

  
“Really?” She doesn’t put the gun down.

  
“You must be Angie? I’m-”

  
Peggy barrels through the door and flails for the light, gasping, “I lost them.” She freezes at the sight of Angie and the stranger in their standoff. With the light, the intruder looks pretty normal- not at all the threatening hulk she had envisioned- and has a red-tinged cloth wrapped around one knee, and crutch leaning against the other leg. Angie almost feels embarrassed.

  
“Its fine, Angie. He’s a coworker,” Peggy pants, sitting on the edge of the table with her back to Angie.

  
Angie lowers the gun, “He couldn’t have knocked?”

  
She’s never going to live this down.


	3. Violet

For the life of her, Violet can’t wash out the reddish-brown spot Daniel’s friend left on her nice white sheets. It stings to think of her that way- Daniel’s friend, the one he prioritized when push came to shove- but it’s difficult to reconcile the sweet woman sharing cookies and laughing with her and Rose and the one leaving rusty stains on the linens.

  
The next time she sees her sisters- Poppy with a toddler on her hip and Maggie with her belly swollen- she puts the break up down to Daniel being too absorbed in his work. It’s technically true, and enough to settle them into the familiar pattern of Maggie’s foul-mouthed invective and Poppy’s “Maggie!” in her big-sister snap before conversation turns to Maggie’s Roger and his missed promotion.

  
*  
Things at the hospital are frenetic for a while; some sort of organized crime shakeup is the reason whispered at the nurse’s station. Violet resolutely doesn’t think of Daniel, throwing herself into the work.

  
When she shows up at their weekly lunch still in her uniform, Maggie and Poppy giggle and gasp at the little crimson stain she got getting a blood sample from a long-limbed boy afraid of needles.

  
Poppy tells her James is outraged that baby Charlie learned to stumble over “Vi-et” before “Dada”. She scoops Charlie onto her lap and cuddles him close.

  
*

  
Maggie’s fit to pop and still insisting that she knows “just the man, he was a sailor in the Navy during the war, killer smile, you’ll love him, really.” Violet pushes her back on the bed and moves her address book out of reach. Maggie sticks her tongue out, and her freckles pop just the way they did when she was small.

  
“Did this mystery man teach you all that language that gets Poppy so riled up?” Violet deflects, heading to the kitchen to stir the soup.

  
“Isn’t it a bit hot for soup?” Roger asks, pretending he hasn’t just been blowing on a stolen spoonful.

  
She grabs the wooden spoon and smacks him on the arm, “If you don’t like it, go make it yourself. Go make sure Maggie stays in bed.”

  
Roger gives a military-perfect salute and marches off, “Yes, Nurse.”

  
*

  
She should have taken the day off. Every time she passes the hallway that leads to Labor and Delivery she imagines she can hear Maggie.

  
Her shift can’t end fast enough, and as she charges into the waiting room she almost collides with Poppy.

  
When they disentangle themselves, Poppy shakes her head and grips Violet’s hand. Over her shoulder, Violet can see Roger pacing, a handful of other waiting fathers fingering boxes of cigars. She sits down next to Poppy and they clutch at each other.

  
*

  
Roger Jr.- she’d roll her eyes at the name, but Maggie’s known her opinion there since high school- is a beautiful baby, she thinks. She may be a bit biased, as his aunt.

  
Poppy has four glasses of water, and she passes them around, raising hers in a toast, “To new beginnings!”

  
Maggie returns the toast, radiant and clutching her baby tightly. Roger barely manages, looking more than a bit faint.

  
Violet turns the idea over in her head, raising the glass absently and chewing her lip.

  
On her way home, she buys new sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you want to come scream with me, I'm on tumblr as inklingofadream.


End file.
